OK, you’ve built a great website/blog and you’re lovin’ it…traffic is flowing, people are reading, leaving comments, the world is your oyster…sounds good doesn’t it. Of course it rarely works out quite that way, but hey, life is an adventure, even if you don’t find the Golden Fleece, you can still have a lot of fun along the way.

Now you’ve protected your baby, you have all the plugins’, and add-ons to make your site secure…you’ve even disabled registration, and made your comments set to administrative approval, you’ve done everything possible to protect your site and your site visitors.

But despite all your efforts your site is still vulnerable. Sadly, that’s the case. Because no matter how well you protect your site there’s someone out there that knows how to circumvent your security. Who knows more than you do about web-security and how to get past it.

Well…I’m going to help you…by giving you some tips on ‘ free ‘ online website scanners. And suggest to you that if you have a website or blog you should be testing them regularly as a part of your normal security measures.

Just like you should regularly update your Anti-Virus, or Firewall, or NoScript, or AdBlock, or SpywareBlaster, or Ad-Aware, etc…you should check your website every once in awhile for issues related to malware and viruses. Even if you have no reason to suspect that there’s a problem it’s a good habit to get into, and it’s a comfort to your visitors that you are conscientiously looking out for their welfare.

So…without further ado…

TAZ Presents: Online Website Scanners

All of these, incidentally, are FREE … just add your URL to be scanned

“If you’d rather be safe than sorry, enter the URL of the site or web page you want to visit in the box below. Our free LinkScanner Online service will visit the URL in a controlled environment on our servers. LinkScanner Online will inspect it in real-time for whether it is hiding any exploit code and, if so, what exploit”…

“Hackers exploit security vulnerabilities in popular web software such as blogs, forums, CMS, image galleries and wikis to insert hidden illicit content into web pages of innocent third-party web sites”…this site also checks for ‘ hidden ‘ exploits that you can’t see with your naked eye…

“This service will scan the URL you insert in the form below and will output all the live links, iframes and external scripts found. You can use this service to analyze your website and see if there are unknown iframes or links that point to unknown domains. On the right of each link there is the option to scan the domain or subdomain of the link directly in URLVoid to have a better idea of its reputation”…

these are NOT meant to replace existing security systems you have installed on your computer, but they DO come in handy similar to a second opinion…especially if you think there might be something on your system that your regular security measures is missing or if you think your security measures themselves might be compromised.

Do not use, republish, in whole or in part, without the consent of the Author. TheTAZZone policy is that Authors retain the rights to the work they submit and/or post…we do not sell, publish, transmit, or have the right to give permission for such…TheTAZZone merely retains the right to use, retain, and publish submitted work within it’s Network

How Networks and Network Attacks Work

To attack a network there is a need to understand fully, the rules and protocols that a network follows.
Once you have a good understanding of these, you can start to understand how various attacks work.

When the time comes that you know how these attacks work, then and only then, can you go about securing it, with a confident
knowledge that you know what it is you are defending against.

The aim of this paper is to help explain how a network operates and how various attacks work.

———————————————————————————————————————–

For a network to operate effectively, there is a requirement for a set of rules that everything on that network must follow.

It must have its own language that everything on it understands and it must have it own way of transmitting things in this
language to other parts of its network. However as there are many networks in many different countries this standard needs to
be a universal one, to allow networks to talk to other networks across the world.

If someone from England was to phone up someone in Russia the chances are they wouldn’t be able to communicate too well.
But if a network were to send a data packet to a network in Russia, it would be received and processed in the correct way.

This is because all networks follow protocols defined by what is known as the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI)

The OSI Model:

The OSI model provide a set of rules and protocols that enable any network following them to talk to any other network that
also follows them.

The rules that make up the OSI are arranged into seven different layers that are all interconnected with each other.

These are:

1) Physical Layer

2) Data Link Layer

3) Network Layer

4) Transport Layer

5) Session Layer

6) Presentation Layer

7) Application Layer

I’ve always found it easier to look on these as different stages a data packet must pass through, at each stage something
is added to the packet and when it is received the same thing is taken away from it by the corresponding stage in the other
network

Physical Layer:

As its name suggests this is the physical connection between two pieces of hardware. So we are talking about the actual Ethernet cable and Network Interface Card (NIC) – hubs are also considered layer one devices. Its major function is to
communicate raw bit streams (The Ones and Zeros). It is responsible for the activation and deactivation of these bit stream
communications. It is also responsible for the defining of the actual cable attachments to the NIC’s and how they work.
This is the lowest layer.

Data Link:

This layer is what deals with the transfer of the data between two points on the network. If the Physical layer
is what is used to pass the raw bits, this is what actually sends them on their way. It also provides error and flow control
of the data packets that are sent and received. MAC addressing is found here – layer 2 switches are also found here – funnily enough. (A MAC address is commonly called a Layer 2 address due to where is sits in the OSI model)

Network Layer:

I will go into more depth on this later on. This layer provides the addressing and routing of the data and acts as a
kind of middle ground between the upper layers and the lower layers.

Transport Layers:

Again this will be explained in more detail later. This is where TCP comes into the process by providing a reliable
and stable method of passing the data packet.

Session Layer:

This is what actually establishes the connections between network applications and then maintains that connection. It also keeps the sessions separate. (A session loosely refers to a connection, so if you are viewing a web page via IE and also sending an email via Outlook then there will be two separate sessions. This layer will ensure data from one session will not end up in the other session.)

Presentation Layer:

This is what translates the data provided by the application in use, into a format that the rest of the
OSI model understands and can work with and vice versa when the data is received, it translates it back into a language
for the application to work with. So to go back to our web page an email example, data is sent in binary over a network, however, if this was displayed in IE and Outlook in this format you would be pretty confused, so something needs to translate the data into an email or a web page and pass it up to the correct application. This layer also handles encryption
and compression.

Application Layer:

This is used for applications that can support and use network services such as, DNS, FTP, TELNET, SMTP
and NetBIOS type applications

So when you send a data packet it starts at the application layer, then the presentation layer wraps its bit of information
around the packet, then the session layer does the same and so on until the packet reaches the Physical layer where it
is passed to where ever it needs to go.

This whole process is known as Encapsulation.

That’s the seven layers of the OSI model.

Now that we know about the methods used to pass data, lets talk about what it actually is that gets passed around.

When information is getting passed around the network it is transmitted in small chunk of data called a Packet.( In truth the terminology changes depending on where in the OSI model the data is – at layers 7, 6, 5 and 4 it is simply called Data, at layer 3 it is called a Packet, at layer 2 it is called a Frame and then at layer one it is referred to a bits (binary bits that is). To avoid confusion data in transit is generically called a Datagram or a Packet.

As the packet passes through each layer small bits of data are added to it or taken away from it depending on if the
packet is being transmitted or received.

A data packet has both a body and a header. The Body obviously contains the message that is being passed, whilst the
header contains things like: The Source IP address, the destination IP address, the total data length, what protocols
are being used, checksum information. See here for more info on headers:

A bit off topic there but that is how binary works; hence that is how an IP address is looked at by your computer.
If you need a number bigger that 255 that is where hex comes in. Hex will be explained later when we talk about MAC addresses

Anyway, in the network layer, both IP packets and Internet Control Messaging Protocol (ICMP) packets exist.

IP packets are used for the actual sending of data, whilst the ICMP packets are there for diagnostic and messaging/notification purposes.
If there is a problem with the delivery or receipt of an IP packet, an ICMP packet can be sent to tell the other system that
there has been a problem.

ICMP can also be used to test the connectivity of something on the network in the form of an Echo Request commonly known as
a Ping. This is a quick and easy way to test if a host is up and running and how latent the connection is between you.
If you send an Echo Request get an Echo Reply the host has to be alive and reachable. If you send an Echo request and if you don’t get anything back then it generally (but not always) means the host is down. Unlike TCP there doesn’t have to
be an established connection to allow ICMP packets to transmit, so systems can be configured to ignore ICMP packets
as a security measure.

The final thing to mention on this topic is IP fragmentation.

Most networks have a limit on the size of IP packet that can be transmitted, so the network layer can break the packet down

A normal packet may look like this:

______________________
| Header | DATA DATA DATA |
———————————–

This may be too big to be transmitted, so the network layer will break it down like so:

______________
| Header | Data 1 |
——– ————–

______________
| Header | Data 2 |
——– ————–

______________
| Header | Data 3 |
——– ————–

It is a simplified explanation of it as in real life Offsets are used instead of 1 2 and 3.
To reconstruct the packet at the receiving station the network layer will put them back in order 1,2 and 3 and
pass it on up to the Transport Layer.

Which, strangely enough, brings us nicely on to the transport layer.

The Transport Layer:

The two major set of rules in this layer are the TCP (Transport Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) protocols

Most services on a network and on the internet will use the TCP protocol, these include things such as; HTTP, FTP, SMTP.
Although each one of these is a protocol in its own right, to actually transfer the data it is being asked to, it will use TCP.

The reason for this is because TCP provides a very reliable, two-way connection between hosts on a network or Internet.

TCP will ensure that all the data is received and in the correct order, if packets are missing or corrupted
it will hold on to these packets until they have been re-sent and only then will it pass it up to the next layer.

To be able to do all this TCP uses a system known as flags.

There are 6 flags in total, they are:

URG………………..Urgent………………..Used for priority data

ACK………………..Acknowledgment….Acknowledges a connection and is usually turned on

PSH………………..Push……………………Tell the recipient to push the data through rather than
buffer it

RST………………..Reset……………………Resets the connection

SYN………………..Synchronize…………..Synchronizes sequence numbers at the beginning of the
connection (REMEMBER THIS)

FIN………………..Finish…………………….Closes a connection

What makes TCP such a reliable connection is that, unlike UDP it establishes a connection before sending the data packet.
It does this by way of a three-way handshake using the flag described above.

Say we have computer ‘A’ and ‘B’. ‘A’ wants to send something to ‘B’, here is what happens:

First,’A’, will send a packet with the SYN flag turned on to ‘B’

‘B’ will then send a packet back with the SYN and ACK flags turned on

Then ‘A’ will send another packet back with just the ACK flag turned on.

(After this has been completed every packet will have the ACK flag turned on.)

This is basically computer ‘A’ saying to ‘B’, “Hi, I have a message for you, do you want it?”
Then ‘B’ says ” OK, im ready send it”
Then ‘A’ says” OK, here it comes”

There is a little bit more to it than that which we will look at next.

The reason that the packets had the SYN flag turned on was to enable the two machines to Synchronize sequence numbers.

Sequence Numbers:

Sequence numbers are used to ensure that the packets arrive in the correct order and to determine if any packets have gone missing somewhere along the line. This is what makes TCP so good. They also allow data from an established and authenticated sessoon to be accepted.

The First SYN packet that is sent to open a connection, will look like this:

SYN Packet
Syn = On
Ack = Off
Seq#000001
Ack# 0

Notice the Sequence number (Seq#) is 000001 and the Acknowledgment Number (Ack#) is 0

So this arrives at ‘B’ and ‘B’ now send a SYN/ACK Packet back to ‘A’, so called because both the SYN flag and the ACK flag will be turned on.

SYN/ACK Packet
Syn = On
Ack = On
Seq#111111
Ack# 000002

Now, this bit can get a bit confusing.

The original sequence number from ‘A’ now becomes ‘B’s Acknowledgment number (Ack#) as it is acknowledging the data sent, it will also increment it accordingly.

Computer ‘A’ knows that he sent a packet with a sequence number of 000001 to ‘B’, so now when the next packet is received from ‘B’ he will be expecting it to have and Ack# of 000002 – he gets this as expected and knows that it is authentic and from B. Also he now has the sequence number ‘B’ is using – 111111, so the next packet that he sends to ‘B’ he knows that he needs to increment it and place this in the ack# field.

So the third and last part of the handshake will be like this:

ACK Packet
Syn = Off
Ack = On
Seq# 00002
Ack# 111112

When ‘B’ sent back the second packet, he had increased it by 1- that now becomes ‘A’s sequence number for the third packet.

Now that both station are aware of each others sequence numbers the mail data that needs to be sent can safely be transmitted safe in the knowledge that error and missing packets will be detected.

I hope that wasn’t to confusing. It is important to understand the sequence number concept for when I move onto TCP/IP Hijacking later on.

The last layer (and what is used in our first attack) is the Data Link Layer.

The Data Link Layer

This is where Ethernet comes into the network layers. This layer provides a standard method of addressing for all Ethernet connected devices on the network. These address are commonly known a Media Access Control addresses or MAC addresses.

Every single Ethernet device is assigned a unique MAC address in the factory where it is made.

Usually the address is in Hex format, i.e. 00-30-BD-07-AC-32

Sometimes the address is also referred to as the Hardware address as it is unique to each piece of hardware.

The reason for this is so that any hardware on a network will have an address that will never change, unlike an IP address, which can change very regularly.

When a data packet is sent over Ethernet it will have in its header the source address and the destination address.

There is a special address that can be used with Ethernet to broadcast to all Ethernet devices on the network, this is all the 1’s in binary, 11111111 which as we now converts to 255 but remember IP address have 4 bytes in them so the broadcast address will be 255.255.255.255.

On the layer above (the network layer) the addressing system used there is IP but on this layer we use MAC addresses for local transmission. There is a requirement to know someones MAC address before we can send data to it providing the destination host is on the same LAN segment – if it is not then the requirement is to know the MAC address of the default gateway.

This is where a protocol know as the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) comes into effect.

This protocol designs a table know as an ARP table to link MAC address to IP addresses and looks (in an edited version) something similar to this

To establish this table ARP messages need to be sent around the network via the broadcast address 255.255.255.255.

There are two main ARP messages – ARP request and ARP reply.

When a packet comes to this layer, it looks at the header and to see what the destination IP address is. It will now send out an ARP request message saying, ” Who does the IP address 192.168.2.2 belong to?”
The computer that is on that network who has that IP address, will receive the ARP request via the broadcast IP, know it has got the IP that it is looking for and reply with an ARP reply message, saying “Yep I have the IP 192.168.2.2, here is my MAC address 00-30-BD-07-CA-37”

This will now get cached in the ARP table and next time a data packet comes down with the destination IP of 192.168.2.2, it will know the correct MAC address to send it to and send it using this straight away.

The ARP broadcast happens at very regular intervals to keep the table up to date.

If an ARP reply message comes in with a new MAC address for a certain IP address, it will overwrite it there and then (unless it has been marked as permanent) – Even if it didn’t send out an ARP request message…

Can anyone see the security flaw here and potential for a possible exploit? If not keep reading.

Switched/Unswitched Networks

On the data link layer also exists a method to distinguish between switched and unswitched networks.

The definition of an unswitched network is that – Every Ethernet packet will pass to every host on the network as a Hub will broadcast all traffic out of all ports except for the port the traffic was received on. All the hardware on this network is expected to only look at the destination address to see if it is meant for them or not. If it is, it will read the data part of the packet and the layer process will begin. If it is not meant for it, it should just ignore it.

Again, can anyone see the security flaw here?

If you set a computer on a network to promiscuous mode it will look at the data part of all packets whether it is addresses to it or not

This is what programs such as TCPDump and Ethereal/Wireshark utilize.

This method of attacking a network is known, as Sniffing and it can be a very useful way of gathering information such as Passwords, user names etc especially with services that don’t use encryption by default – Telnet, POP3 and FTP for example.

The security implications are quite obvious here and the way to fix them is to get a switched network.

Switched Networks:

The idea of a switched network is to ensure that only the packet addresses to a certain computer is sent to it.

This is done by the switch knowing what MAC address is plugged into which port on the switch and only sending data addressed to it out on that port

So say the switch has 3 ports, three computers are plugged into it with three different MAC address, I will use 1 2 and 3 to represent the Mac’s here.

The switch receives a data packet addressed to the MAC address of 1.
(If it were an unswitched network it would now send this data packet out of all ports to all computers.)

But this switch knows that computer with the MAC address of 1 is plugged into port 2, so it will only send the data packet out of port 2.

(Technically the switch will initially flood the traffic out of all ports until it finds out which port the MAC address is on, and then from here on in it will only send it out of the relevant port – this is not too much of a concern though as the first packets destined for the host are likely to be ARP requests anyway – which are broadcast packets….)

Seems like a foolproof way to send data packets, doesn’t it? Well there is a way around it.

Spoofing:

So far the security measures have been concerned with the destination IP/MAC address, what they cant verify is if the source address is correct.

This type of spoofing is simply fooling the switch into thinking that a data packet has come from somewhere it didn’t – normally a device it trusts.

So if you can send a data packet out and make a switch think it has come from somewhere else, you have successfully spoofed its source address.

To spoof an address we need to let the network know that the address you are going to use, is alive and well on the network and let it know an IP and MAC address.

Where are these kept? Yep, the ARP table. You may recall me saying earlier that when an ARP reply arrives with a known IP address but a different MAC address all it will do is overwrite the old MAC address with the new one! Even if it has not sent out an ARP request broadcast..

This is called ARP poisoning.

Say we have two computers on a network, old faithful ‘A’ and ‘B’.

They will each have an ARP cache; ‘A’ will have ‘B’s IP address and Mac address and in return ‘B’ will have ‘A’s IP and MAC address.

Think back to the three-port switch, we will be the third computer on that switch.
For the sake of simplicity we will have the MAC addresses of 1,2 and 3 belonging to computers A, B and C respectively. So we will be C with the MAC of 3.

We will have used a program such as TCPDump to capture all the ARP messages that have been sent and we can know see the IP addresses and MAC addresses of ‘A’ and ‘B’. (Failing this, the results of a ping will add the MAC and IP address to your ARP table, providing you are on the same network)

What we now need to do now, is make ‘A’ think we are ‘B’ and also make ‘B’ think we are ‘A’.
So now matter what, the switch will send all the data packets to us.

So, we send an ARP reply out to ‘A’ saying that we are ‘B’ and have a MAC address of 3 (remember our actual MAC is 3, so the switch will send all packets out to us) So now any packets that ‘A’ wants to send to ‘B’, he will now address to the MAC of 3. (aka us) as per his ARP cache.

The beauty of this attack is that at this exact point of the attack ‘B’ can still send traffic as normal to all other hosts – all we are doing is making host ‘A’ address the packets to us instead of host ‘B’. The switch is not attacked or exploited in anyway – it carries on doing what it is meant to do and sends the packets to the MAC address host ‘A’ has addressed them too..It is a good idea to keep a constant stream of forged ARP replies running to host ‘A’ as if host ‘B’ was to send a packet to host ‘A’ then its ARP cache would be updated to reflect the true ARP information.

There are a few tools that will do this for us DSniff and Nemesis are two of the most common.

We still have an issue though in that the data that ‘A’ is sending to ‘B’ is not getting there as it is coming to us. We need to turn IP forwarding on to allow the data to reach ‘B’. Obviously this will only allow us to sniff half of the traffic – traffic from ‘A’ that is being sent to ‘B’ – host B still has the correct MAC address for host A so it will not be sent to us…

We now need to do the same thing to B and send him a fake ARP Reply informing him that host ‘A’ has the MAC address of 3. This will ensure we get the return traffic and as long as we have IP Forwarding enabled and have fired Ethereal/TCPDump up we will have a log of all traffic sent between the two hosts and neither of them will be aware that there is a ‘Man in the Middle’ sniffing their traffic.

We need to ensure the regular sending of the ARP replies to the two hosts to ensure that the relevant ARP caches always have our MAC address in them.

You can do this for every computer on the network should you so wish, as far as they are concerned they are sending a data packet addressed to 3, and the switch will duly oblige and send the data straight to you.

Imagine what you could do if one of the computers was a gateway for that sites Internet traffic?

Hijacking a TCP/IP Connection.

For this attack you will need to understand how the sequence numbers work, so if you didn’t understand it before, go back and re-read it!

For this to work it is essential the attacker is on the same network as the victim.

When a packet is received after a connection has been established, it has to have the correct sequence number, if the number has already been used the packet will be dropped. If it is higher than what was expected but still within the defined limits then it will be stored in case it was from a message that has been fragmented and may need to be put back together.

If the sending stations sequence number is not what the receiving station expected and vice versa, all data packets are not passed up through the layers and you have a form of denial of service. If this happens the connection will still remain established.

Here’s how this attack works:

We will use hosts ‘A’ and ‘B’ again for this.

We need to sniff all packets coming from the victim computer (‘A’) with a utility such as TCPDump.
From these sniffed packets we can get the sequence number that ‘A’ is up to.

Now we send a packet with the source address spoofed to make it looked like it came from ‘A’ to ‘B’ with the correct sequence number. (TCPDump again)

When ‘B’ receives this packet, believing it cam from ‘A’ he will respond to this data packet, after increasing the sequence number.

Now ‘A’ didn’t send the packet, we did, so when the packet from ‘B’ arrives with the wrong sequence number it will keep it for reconstruction purposes as the sequence number will be higher but to all intents and purposes he will ignore it.

But what will happen now, if ‘A’ sends a packet to ‘B’? His sequence number will be one that has already been used (by us) so ‘B’ will drop the packet. So no matter what ‘A’ sends now, it will always be ignored. And everything B sends to A will be stored for later use, as the sequence number will be too high.

But as we sent out the first packet that caused all this, we have the correct sequence number that ‘B’ is expecting, so we have in effect hijacked the connection because we can carry on talking to ‘B’ and whatever ‘A’ sends will be ignored! And we have caused a denial of service (DoS) between two computers on this network.

There is another similar method whereby you sniff a connection, spoof get the relevant sequence numbers, spoof the source address and send a packet with the RST (reset) flag turned on, when you send this you will reset the connection. Again causing a DoS state that can be hijacked as long as you have the correct sequence number.

I hope this has been an informative paper and helps people to understand network protocols and very basic attacks a bit more thoroughly.

Nokia.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/tutorial-how-networks-and-network-attacks-work/feed/2Photoshop Tutorial : Photo To Lineart To Brushhttp://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-photo-to-lineart-to-brush/
http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-photo-to-lineart-to-brush/#commentsThu, 10 Aug 2017 11:55:52 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=4689I did a tutorial called photo-to-lineart and realised that I should have taken it one step further and showed you how to create a brush from the lineart. It could come in handy for doing a grunge type image or something similar.

You can start with the image below to practise on if you like, just click through for the larger version.

Open the image and duplicate the layer. Working on the duplicate layer go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate. On this particular image I used the Find Edges filter found under Filter>Sytlize>Find Edges. Go to the top menu bar and open the levels dialogue box Image>Adjustments>Levels. You can punch in the same numbers that I have if you are using this image.

Grab a hard edged brush and make sure that the f/ground colour is set to white. You are going to paint away the excess rubbish outside of the figure. You can see what I have done in the image below.

If any of the darks lines have disappeared, grab a brush f/ground set to black – on re paint them in. The shoes that my son had in his hands have lost some of the lines, so I drew them back in again. I also did some on the lines on the shirt and face. See image below.

Next, grab the magic wand tool and set the tolerance to 10 – anti alias checked and contigious unchecked. Click in the white area of the image. Turn off the original b/ground layer (photo) and then go to Edit>Cut or press Ctrl + X on the keyboard. You should end up with something similar to the image below.

Make sure that the original photo layer is still turned off (or you can trash it) zoom out to 50% and grab the rectangular marquee tool, and make a selection around the image. See image below.

Go to the top menu bar and choose Edit>Define Brush Preset. When the dialogue box appears, choose a name for the brush. Click OK. Open a new file by going to File>New. I chose a file 500 X 700 @ 72 dpi. Create a new layer above the b/ground layer and make your brush the active tool. In the top menu bar open the brush preset picker and scroll down to the end – your newly make brush should be there, click on your brush and then close the picker. Adjust the size of your brush to suit and then click on the image

And that is the basis of making a brush from lineart. You can go ahead and change the b/ground to a colour, pattern or gradient. Do multiple brush strokes at different sizes (use a new layer for each one so you can transform the individual strokes), Rotate or warp each indivdual stroke. Try different blend modes. On the image below, I filled the b/ground with a pattern, then did one brush stroke on each new layer. I then used the Free Transform to rotate and scale the b/ground strokes. On the larger brush stroke I used the warp tool.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-photo-to-lineart-to-brush/feed/1Cleaning glue off a DVD/Bluerayhttp://www.thetazzone.com/cleaning-glue-off-a-dvdblueray/
http://www.thetazzone.com/cleaning-glue-off-a-dvdblueray/#respondSat, 05 Aug 2017 13:56:27 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=5985OK we’ve all come across, at one time or another, if you purchased used DVD’s or Bluerays, glue stuck to the DVD/Blueray ( from this point going forward DISC will represent both ) . Usually it’s a sticker that was removed leaving glue behind, and that glue collects dirt and particles, which makes it even more of a challenge to get off.

There’s all kinds of remedies you can find on the Internet, as examples, scotch tape, rubbing alcohol, lemon juice, goo gone, lighter fluid, cornstarch, even WD-40. Scotch tape will remove the glue, if you want to spend hours trying to get it off, rubbing alcohol won’t get the glue off if it’s more than just a faint spot. The others mostly require you having to clean up the mess you just made, usually taking longer and possibly damaging the disc more than the glue itself.

So, how do you get the glue off? Well, olive oil. Yes, that’s it. Olive oil removes it within seconds. A light dab on a microfiber cloth, or a cloth that doesn’t shed, rubbing gently, will clean the glue almost instantly right off, without the need for heavy rubbing. Then, gently wipe the olive oil off the DISC. After you’ve wiped the olive oil off and it dries, then dab another cloth into a equal part water and Isopropyl alcohol solution, and clean the DISC from the center towards the edge. Let it dry in a vertical position.

And you’re done.

Just so you know I used this method to clean off substantial amounts of glue from both Divergent and Catching Fire Bluerays, and both work perfectly.

( image courtesy of stray-notes.blogspot.com )

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/cleaning-glue-off-a-dvdblueray/feed/0Data structures 1 – An introduction to data structureshttp://www.thetazzone.com/data-structures-1-an-introduction-to-data-structures/
http://www.thetazzone.com/data-structures-1-an-introduction-to-data-structures/#commentsWed, 02 Aug 2017 03:48:40 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=2676When trying desperately to explain data structures to a colleague, I came to the rather shocking realisation that there is very little material out there for beginners to cut their teeth on. So, without further ado, here is my little primer on data structures and how they work. In each post, I will try to discuss the general principles and algorithms behind the data structure, and show as little code as possible in any given programming language. Where code is unavoidable, I will attempt to use a form of pseudo-code that should lend itself easily to implementation in most programming languages. Where code is really unavoidable, I’ll use Java.

Let’s start with the basics. What is a data structure? A data structure is essentially a way to store related types of data in a way that performing certain operations on the data is made more convenient. The operations might be as simple as being able to access the data quickly and efficiently on demand or as complex as sorting or searching through the data. The type of data structure used depends both on the type of data and the operation you want to perform on it.

Let’s make this easier with an analogy. Say you want to store notes from lectures or meetings. If the notes are on loose-leaf paper, you’d store it in a binder. The binder would then be one type of data structure. In this case, you can make some assumptions about the data. For example, you know that the paper is thin, and that you’re most likely to use only one size of paper, say A4. Now, if you only have a few pages of notes, it will be very easy for you to find the page you want, you simply go through the pages one at a time sequentially till you find the one you’re looking for. However, as your collection of notes grows, at some point, going through each page will no longer a feasible way of finding the desired page. At this point, you will either put in separators or start numbering the pages and make an index, so you can find what you were looking for quickly. You might even put the notes in different binders depending on their subject.

Now, imagine that you have a box full of balls with numbers on them. If you want to find a particular ball, you would have to randomly pick balls till you find the right one. What would you if you wanted to find the ball numbered 27 quickly? Why not put the balls on a shelf with the numbers clearly visible? In this case, the shelf is clearly the superior data structure when you want to find the quickly. So, the type of data structure that is best for a particular task (binder, box or shelf) depends both on the type of data (loose-leaf paper or balls) and what you want to do with it (just store it, read it through one page at a time, find the page you want quickly or find a ball with a particular number).

The simplest type of data structure is called an array. An array is a data structure that holds a fixed maximum number of a single type of data. In computer memory, an array is stored contiguously. This means that the array is stored as a single piece of memory. The shelf that we made to store the balls is an array. No matter how big the room is (the computer’s memory), the shelf can only store a set number of balls in a row.

Another feature of an array is random access. This means that you can easily access the ith element of an array, simply by knowing the number of the element. In our ball example, if you wanted to access the fifth ball from the left, and you knew the diameter of each ball, and also that the balls were arranged in a row so that each ball touched the next one, even if you weren’t able to see each ball, you would know exactly how far to the right you had to go to find the fifth ball, i.e. 5 x diameter. This is how a computer knows where to find a particular element of an array. It simply takes the size of the data type, multiplies it by the number of the element you want to access and adds the result to the array’s starting location. You can also access arrays sequentially by reading each element in succession.

An array in computer memory. The array is stored contiguously in memory (all in one go). Notice how the size of each element (the numbered rectangles) is the same. The sizes of each element and of the overall array are fixed. One can access each element of the array by index (the number) and sequentially (by starting at 1 and continuing till .

So, arrays provide the very best in both random and sequential access. So why not use arrays all the time? You don’t really need to know about any other data structure, right? Wrong. While arrays are convenient and fast, the convenience and speed come with some pretty nasty trade-offs. For one, because arrays are stored contiguously in memory, you have to tell the computer in advance what the maximum size of the array is. What’s worse, if in the middle of your program you decide that you want to increase or decrease the size of the array, you can’t. Furthermore, trying to access an array index that’s beyond the maximum size of your array can lead to program crashes in some languages and complete system lockups in others. So, unless you can guess pretty well how much memory your array is going to use, you’re either going to use lots of memory to store very little data, or end up not having enough space to store it. In our ball example, that would be like building a shelf 50 feet long, only to discover that you only had to store 5 pool balls or building a shelf designed to hold 50 balls, only to discover that some bright spark decided to send you 500.

So, in conclusion, arrays are a potentially very useful basic data structure, provided you can make reasonable assumptions about how much data you want to store. What if you don’t know? Well, that’s what linked lists are for. But I’ll cover those some other time. Next time, we’ll take a more detailed look at arrays.

Do not use, republish, in whole or in part, without the consent of the Author. TheTAZZone policy is that Authors retain the rights to the work they submit and/or post…we do not sell, publish, transmit, or have the right to give permission for such…TheTAZZone merely retains the right to use, retain, and publish submitted work within it’s Network

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/data-structures-1-an-introduction-to-data-structures/feed/1TAZ Computer, Script, and Photoshop Tutorial Listhttp://www.thetazzone.com/computer-script-photoshop-tutorial-list/
http://www.thetazzone.com/computer-script-photoshop-tutorial-list/#commentsThu, 05 Jun 2014 12:10:15 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=3915Our members have written some great ‘ original ‘ tutorials over the years, some of which have been linked to by various Universities as recommended, and in some cases, required reading for specific classes.

Guidelines:

1. If you are an educational body or a non-profit institution you are welcome, without our expressed permission, under commonly understood ‘ Fair Use ‘ policy, to republish a small portion ( an excerpt ) of these tutorials provided that you credit the tutorial writer/author and link back to the original source on TAZ.

2. All others must request permission from TAZ or the author. A simple e-mail is usually enough to be granted the same permission as above, provided you are not going to financially benefit from the tutorial without compensating the author. Our members wrote these tutorials for free for the benefit of our members and visitors, and it would be grossly unfair for someone else to financially profit from their hard work and ( the author ) not be compensated for it. They did not write these tutorials so that you can make money, and they get the shaft. So….if you’d like to republish a small portion ( an excerpt ) of these tutorials on your site and credit the tutorial writer/author with a link back to the original source on TAZ….send us an e-mail ( administration[at]thetazzone.com ).

3. As always, you are welcome to link to these tutorials without our expressed permission, no e-mail is required to just link to them. Whether you are linking to one, or more than one, or all of them as a collection. We encourage you to share these tutorials with your readers by providing your visitors with a link to them.

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All these tutorials are meant for educational purposes only! Applying any of these tutorials without the proper knowledge or expertise may result in unwanted results. Use at your own risk! As there is no way we can ensure that you properly applied these tutorials, in the right manner, or even on the proper machine. The Internet and technology is advancing at a rapid rate and some of these tutorials, at some point, may only have educational value.

If you would like to write a tutorial for TAZ, to show your appreciation or to help others, please join our forum ( TAZforum ) and submit one to the proper forum category. Several educational institutions recommend our tutorials to their students, and a few tutorials have been required reading for specific classes. So submit your ‘ original ‘ tutorial to TAZ and maybe you might find it on your school’s recommended or required reading material at a class you attend.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/computer-script-photoshop-tutorial-list/feed/2Domain Checker Shell Script Part Onehttp://www.thetazzone.com/domain-checker-shell-script-part-one/
http://www.thetazzone.com/domain-checker-shell-script-part-one/#respondTue, 29 May 2012 03:36:39 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=5350During the hunt for available domain names, I make frequent use of the whois utility from a Linux command line. I have never trusted web-based whois tools. You never know if your searches are being stored. Also, I haven’t found a web-based whois that is as flexible as a shell script. So, I’ve written a simple set of scripts to aid in the search for domains to register. I must warn you, it’s not pretty, but I hope you’ll find it useful.

NOTE: For reasons which I cannot fathom, the whois utility isn’t available by default on all *nix systems. On Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint, you can install it using the commandsudo apt-get install whois.

First, here is the code for wi.sh (so called because I wish I could find a gem):
#!/bin/sh
#
# This program is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL, >=2.0.
# This software comes with absolutely NO WARRANTY. Use at your own risk!
#
# wi.sh v0.1.0
# Author: Tim Kissane
#
# Check the whois record for the existence of a domain
# that I wi.sh I could buy. :)

term=Expiration
name=$1
tld=$2
timer=2

if [ “$tld” = “” ] # if no second arg, default to .com
then
tld=”.com”
fi

The first 5 are, unsurprisingly, not available. The last name has no
“Expiration” line and is available to register. (go ahead, I don’t mind)

To do this with a different TLD, just add it into the command:

for dn in `cat sample.txt`; do wi.sh $dn .net; done

Now, for a really long list of names, this is a pain to watch the scrolling
output and will make your eyes glaze. To save the ouput to a file, use
redirection:

for dn in `cat sample.txt`; do wi.sh $dn .net; done > output.txt

Or, if you want to watch the scrolling results and save to a file, use a pipe to tee:

for dn in `cat sample.txt`; do wi.sh $dn .net; done | tee output.txt

This is better, but who wants to pore through hundreds or thousands of lines
in output.txt looking for the available names? Not me!

That’s when we use the next script, multilinegrep.pl, a short perl job
which should run on any *nix system with perl installed.

Save this code as ‘multilinegrep.pl’:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
# This program is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL, >=2.0.
# This software comes with absolutely NO WARRANTY. Use at your own risk!
#
# multilinegrep v0.1.0
# Author: Tim Kissane
#
# A small utility to find consecutive lines that begin
# with "Checking" in the output of wi.sh

The echo at the end adds a line begining with “Checking” at the end of the file. Now, it works. So,

multilinegrep.pl output.txt

produces:

jimihendrixisonewiththeuniverse.com

This can also be saved to a file,

multilinegrep.pl output.txt | tee available.txt

You can copy and paste the contents of available.txt into the form at valuate.com, estibot.com, godaddy.com or any where else you like. I will sometimes run several of these while sleeping, then I can register any found treasures in the morning.

In Part Two, I’ll add a few tips and tricks to perform even more powerful searches.Peace,
Tim

( image courtesy of cosmosmagazine.com )

Do not use, republish, in whole or in part, without the consent of the Author. TheTAZZone policy is that Authors retain the rights to the work they submit and/or post…we do not sell, publish, transmit, or have the right to give permission for such…TheTAZZone merely retains the right to use, retain, and publish submitted work within it’s Network.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/domain-checker-shell-script-part-one/feed/0Photoshop Tutorial : Dreamy Glow For Portraitshttp://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-dreamy-glow-for-portraits/
http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-dreamy-glow-for-portraits/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2012 12:06:45 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=4687This technique is an oldie, but a goodie. I think Eddie Tapp was the first person I saw do it and there have been variations, but for a quick and interesting portrait effect this is terrific. It is not a beauty retouch.

The image is brought to us by hamletnc over at Stock Xchange I have the original image as well as one that I tidied up a bit, you can choose which one you work on. I used the Making Eyes Shine Tutorial on the eyes. I also used the Adding Depth To EyelashesI also did some general tidying up of the image (still needs lots, lots more), removed the earrings (and normally I would have done something with the ear) added a little bit of length to the hair and tidied the edges a bit, and cleaned her teeth You’ll also noticed that I reduced the darkish lines under the young lady’s eyes. I did this in combination with her smile lines, the line on her chin and the lines on her neck on the one layer, then reduced the opacity of the layer to 40%. Don’t make the mistake of only reducing the lines under the eyes (example) because it will unbalance the face. Just another point before we get on with it – in this tutorial we are going to be using the Red Channel, if your image has quite a lot of red in it i.e. dress, b/ground etc., it is going to fade the red. You can of course use the mask to bring it back (as we will in this image), but you might want to try the Green Channel first to see what kind of effect you will get, and it will preserve the red in the image. Click through for the larger images.

If you’ve opened the second image, go ahead and duplicate it. Next, go to the channels palette and click on the red channel. Press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select all – press Ctrl + C to copy – click on the RGB channel, switch back to the layers palette, make aure the top layer is active, then press Ctrl + V on the keyboard to the paste the red channel. Change the blend mode of the layer to Luminosity and take the opacity down to about 30%. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and blur the image by about 6 pixels. Try and maintain some texture in the skin.

Add a mask to this layer by clicking on the Add Layer Mask Icon at the bottom of the layers palette, make sure the f/ground colour is set to white and go and grab a soft edged brush. You’ll probably have to zoom in a bit for this – paint over the eyeball, the lips and teeth, the eyebrows, the scarf at the bottom of the image, and the hair around the face, leaving the outer edges. Probably go about half way back into the hair. If you want to view the mask at any time hold down the Alt key and click on the mask, to return to a normal view – do the same. Hopefully you’ll be able to see what I’ve done in the image below.

We’re going to create a new layer, make sure that you are still working on the layer with the mask, then press Ctrl + Alt and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. A dialogue box will appear, change the blend mode to Soft Light and check the box that says ‘Fill with soft light neutral color (50% gray)’ Make sure the new layer is at the top of the stack and grab your Dodge Tool from the side Toolbar. In the top options bar change the Range to Highlights and use about a 15% opacity, then I want you to go over the highlights in the hair – leave the outer edges of the hair – perhaps don’t go any further out than half way. Once you’ve done want you want to do with the Dodge Tool you can either carry on, on this layer when we use the Burn Tool or create a new one, so you have these on two seperate layers. Grab your Burn Tool, change the Range to Shadows and the opacity to about 15% and burn over some of the darker areas.

When you are happy with your work Flatten the image, then duplicate it. Change the blend mode to Overlay, then go to Filter>Other>High Pass and set the pixel radius to about 1.5 Add a layer mask and then press Ctrl + i on the keyboard to invert the mask. Make sure the f/ground colour is white, select a soft edged brush and paint over the same areas as you did before – eyebrows, eyeballs, lips and teeth, hair. Take the opacity of the layer down to suit. You might end up with something similar to the image below.

If you think this is a little pale, you can always use a curves adjustment layer to add some contrast to it.

And here is a comparison image – original and adjusted.

Have fun

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-dreamy-glow-for-portraits/feed/0Photoshop Tutorial : Pop Those Colours Using LAB Modehttp://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-pop-those-colours-using-lab-mode/
http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-pop-those-colours-using-lab-mode/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2012 11:56:58 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=4684The mysterious Lab colour space Firstly, let me suggest that if you really want to know about the Lab colour space you get your hands on anything by Dan Margulis. He is the guy the gurus go to when they want to know something about it, he’s the man.

A quick way of looking at the Lab colour space is this

L = Lightness

a = Red and Green.

b = Blue and Yellow.

Using a curve in the a or b channels can enhance specific colours in specific directions. Using a curve in the L channel only affects the tone of an image without affecting the colours.

Having said all that, we’re not going to be using curves, we’re going to apply a specific channel (using the apply image command) to get a desired result.

The image below is from sxc.hu and I can’t find the owners info, so please don’t go splashing it around the web. The image below the start image is a comparison of the start and finish images. The original image is ‘as is’ I have done no corrections to it all other than resizing it to a manageable size for this tutorial – 800 x 571 @72dpi.

Just before you get going. The settings I’ve used on this particular image may not work well on other images. You’ll probably have to fiddle around with different settings, blend modes and opacities to get the look you want. I call it playing

Open an image, duplicate it and then close the original. Double click on the b/ground layer to unlock it and either choose the default name or call it something deep and meaningful, then duplicate the layer. My 2 layers are called ‘Layer 0′ and Layer 0 copy’

Working on the top layer go to Image>Mode and click on Lab colour – see image below. Once you do that, you will be presented with a dialogue box asking if you would like to merge the layers. Politely decline.

Now you’re in the Lab colour space …… Next, go to Image>Apply Image and you will be presented with the dialogue box below. Some of the settings might be a bit different.

Taking a look at the dialogue box – the source will be the original b/ground layer, which in this case is Rusty Car Copy. The Layer drop down menu is for the layer you want to apply the effect to – in this case the layer 0 copy layer. The channel drop down menu will give the options of Lab (which is a combination of Lightness, a and b) – or L,a, b channels individually and transparency is the last one. The blending option is familiar to most of you and so is the opacity setting. This is where you get to player with the different options, except the Source and Layer menus in this case. So you can go ahead and punch in the numbers I have if you like, or experiment a little bit to something you like.

Once you have the settings are you want them, go to Image>Mode and choose RGB from the menu, politely decline the invitation to merge the layers and you can proceed as you wish. Go ahead and change the blend mode of the layer, use a mask to reveal or hide parts of the colour enhancement ….. but most of all, have fun

And here is the finished image.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-pop-those-colours-using-lab-mode/feed/0Photoshop Tutorial : Rugged, Gritty Effecthttp://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-rugged-gritty-effect/
http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-rugged-gritty-effect/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2012 11:50:35 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=4682I didn’t really know what to call this Probably aimed at portraits, but you could try it on other things to see how it turns out.

All the settings used are relevant to this file 800 X 600@72dpi, they will change if you are using a higher res image …. and the technique probably works better on a higher res.

Here we go. Open the start image, or one of your own, and duplicate it then close the original. Duplicate the image by dragging it to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette or press Ctrl + J on the keyboard. Change the blend mode to Overlay and then go to Filter>Other>High Pass. You can see that I have chosen a radius of 4 for this image. You are going to do another High Pass later on, but this should do for now. Remember, if you are working on a higher res image the numbers will have to be larger.

Now you are going to add a Gradient Map adjustment layer. Before you do that, check that your f/ground and b/ground colours are set to their defaults i.e. black and white. Once you have the colours to their default, click on the Create New Adjustment Layer at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Gradient Map. Click on the Gradient (see image) to get the dialogue box.

You should now have the dialogue box visible and you can start to make some adjustments. Usin the bottom Color Stops drag the black triangle in till the Location reads 15% – drag the white stop in till it reads 95% and move the Color Midpoint till it reads 55%. These are just the settings I chose, you can change them if you like.

Once you have it as you like, click OK in the Gradient Editor and then OK in the Gradient Map to accept.

Now you are going to do a Stamp Visible. There are several ways that you can do this – making sure that you have the Gradient Adjustment layer active you can hit the Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E keys and the 3 layers will be merged into one. Or you can create a new blank layer above the Gradient Map Layer, hold down the Alt key go to the little downward facing triangle at top of the layers palette and select Merge Visible – don’t let go of the Alt key until it has merged. Change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass and you can punch in the number I have, or choose one of your own.

If you hold down the Alt key and click on the eyeball next to the background layer, you can see the changes you have made so far. With the Alt key still held down click on the eyeball again to view all of the layers.

You could stop there if you wanted to, but you can also do a couple of other things. Making sure that you are working on the top most layer, go to the new adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Solid Color. I chose a blue colour (see image below) and then change the blend mode to colour and you’ll probably have to take the opacity down as well. I took the opacity down to 15%.

To further enhance this, you could then create a new blank layer at the top of the layer stack, grab your Elliptical Marquee Tool, hold down the Shift Key to get a circle shape, go to Select>Inverse and then fill the selection with black (or some other colour). Press Ctrl + D to deselect and then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and give it a really high blur. I did about 60 on this image. Go back to Filter> and choose Gaussian Blur from the top to repeat the filter, or you could press Ctrl + F on the keyboard. I then took the opacity of the layer down to 50% – and here is the final image and then a comparison image.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-rugged-gritty-effect/feed/0Photoshop Tutorial : Create A Bokeh Effecthttp://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-create-a-bokeh-effect/
http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-create-a-bokeh-effect/#commentsMon, 12 Mar 2012 11:44:37 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=4680This probably isn’t really a Bokeh effect, but it will give you the tools to create one, if you take more time that I am going to take in this tutorial.

I’ve opened a new file 800 X 600@72 dpi with a white background (this can be changed later), and then created a new layer above that by using the ‘create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette’ or you can press Shift + Ctrl + N on the keyboard and click OK to accept the default name, or name it something different.

Before we go on the theory behind this effect is on each new layer, you are going to half the brush size and half the Gaussian Blur amount. That isn’t a hard and fast rule, it is just what you are going to be doing here. You are also going to be doing a Gradient Layer and you can change anything in the dialogue box that you want. I’m going to be using the default Gradients, probably without adjusting them. You can play to your hearts content with the different settings and hopefully come up with some really cool effects. I’m also going to be using a simple hard edged round brush, because none of us are likely to have the same brushes installed. Feel free to use other brushes.

So, on with the business. Select a hard edged round brush from the brushes palette, I have chosen a 175 pixel brush and you are going to go and make some adjustments to the settings in the brushes palette. You can access that by going to Window>Brushes, or using the little window thingy on the top left of the top menu bar. See image.

Click on Shape Dynamics and you can punch in the same numbers that I have.

Click on Scattering and punch in the same numbers.

Click on ‘Other Dynamics’ and punch in the same numbers.

And then you can close the dialogue box. Make sure that your f/ground is set to black and the b/ground to white, and working on the new blank layer you created earlier, just click a couple of times in a different place. See image.

Now go to the ‘Fill’ option at the top right of the layers palette and take it all the way down to 0% – the brush strokes will disappear. From the FX icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette, choose Gradient Overlay. The default gradient will appear (i.e. black & white) click on the downward facing arrow beside the black to white gradient to open the gradient picker. I’ve picked a default blue gradient and left all the other settings alone.

When you have everything as want it, click OK to accept the changes. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and choose a setting that you like, or you can punch in the numbers that I have below.

You can still add other effects to each of these layers – drop shadow, outer or inner glow etc., Now repeat the same process for as many layers as you like. The final layer would probably be free of the Gaussian Blur filter. In the image below I have used 5 layers. On a couple of the layers I changed the setting for the gradient to reflective and radial and inverted the gradient. On the last layer I used a fireworks brush and chose a different gradient, I also added a drop shadow and sharpened it. Finally, I unlocked the b/ground layer added a gradient. And the final image is below.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-create-a-bokeh-effect/feed/1Photoshop Tutorial : Selective Colouring With A Twisthttp://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-selective-colouring-with-a-twist/
http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-selective-colouring-with-a-twist/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2012 11:34:53 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=4678I like selective colouring, when it’s done properly of course. Good thing is that it is relatively easy to do and can certainly add drama and impact to an image.

Grab yourself an image, use an adjustment layer (well I hope you use an adjustment layer) to desaturate the image, or use one of the many other methods available in Photoshop to do it, add a mask, paint back in the colour you want – easy – the problem with that is that people mostly do it that way and end up with a B&W image with a bit of colour on it. Lets try another variation on this to get an image just a bit different from the norm

You can get the image below to practise on if you like, copyright is mine etc., (because though it’s a sucky image, it’s still my sucky image)

Open the Image, duplicate the image by either dragging it to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette or pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard, then hide the b/ground layer by clicking on the eyeball. This is just a habit with me, in this case you probably have no need to do it. Go to the create new adjustment layer at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Hue/Saturation to bring up the dialogue box. Check the Colorize box and choose a colour that you would like the background of your image to be. You can see what I have chosen in the screenshot below, don’t forget that you can fiddle around with the Saturation and Lightness – I haven’t.

Grab a brush, check that the f/ground is set to black, click on the Hue/Sat mask to make it active and paint back in the area that you would to have colour. You could have made a selection prior to doing the Hue/Sat adjustment with an Alpha Channel, the pen tool, quick mask etc., I prefer to paint back in the selective colour. If you make a boo boo whilst painting on the mask, just switch the f/ground to white, correct and then switch back to black.

And that is it basically. I’ve gone ahead in my example and used a curves adjustment to lighten my son, held down the Alt key, then dragged the mask from the Hue/Sat layer onto the curves adjustment layer, then pressed Ctrl + i on the keyboard to invert it. I then did a Stamp Visible Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E (make sure you are on the topmost layer before you do this) or, if you run out of fingers, you can hold down the Alt key go to the little downward facing arrow at the top right of the layers palette and select Merge Visible – don’t let go of the Alt key until you have clicked on Merge Visible, you’ll figure out how to make sure it does work, when it doesn’t work for you On the newly merged layer I then did an Unsharp Mask (how primitive of me), added a layer mask and grabbed the layer mask from the curves layer to make sure that it only affected the selectively coloured area. Have fun with it. As an end thought to this, make sure you do all your image corrections before you do this process – you’ll probably notice that I didn’t with my image.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-selective-colouring-with-a-twist/feed/0Photoshop Tutorial : Another Quick Fix For Portraitshttp://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-another-quick-fix-for-portraits/
http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-another-quick-fix-for-portraits/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2012 07:09:53 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=4676Don’t just think of portraits as involving people, I think this will work well with animals as well.

This process is dependant on lots of factors, personal taste being one of them. The blend modes for the layers and the sharpening and blurring will still be the same. However, the amounts of blurring and sharpening will vary, as will the opacity of the two layers – well, 3 layers if you choose to go one step further. So lets take a look at the process, then you can go off and play

The practise image is brought to us by Arif Imam over at StockExchange, you can find it HERE I have resized the image.

That’s a nice portrait, it could probably do with quite a bit of colour correction. Even then, it may not be anything special. So lets bypass the colour correction and try to make it have an impact with a couple of layers and changing blend modes. Open the image, duplicate the image and close the original. Duplicate the background layer by dragging it to the create a new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette or pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard. Working on the top layer, press Ctrl + U on the keyboard to bring up the Hue/Sat dialogue box and take the Saturation all the way down to -100, click OK to accept the changes. Duplicate the desaturated layer twice more by pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard twice. You should now have 3 desaturated layers. Name the top layer ‘Multiply’ and the middle layer “Screen”, turn off the top layer (multiply layer) and change the blend mode of the layer named Screen to Screen. You should have something similar to the image below.

Still working on the layer you changed to screen go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask … or you can use Smart Sharpen if you like. You can copy my settings for this image but different amounts will work better on different images – just a case of finding the time to practise a little bit. I’m going to push the numbers here – Amount 300% – Radius 0.8 – Threshold 0

Turn on the layer you named multiply and change the blend mode to multiply. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and again on this particular image you can punch in the same numbers that I have ….. experiment.

Change the opacity of the multiply layer to about 40% With some images you may have go and reduce the opacity of the Screen layer as well, but I have left it at 100% in this image. Duplicate the original background layer and drag it to the top of the stack. Change the blend mode to Soft Light and lower the opacity to suit. I used 40%, which can be adjusted. I then used a Curves adjustment layer Output 125 – Input 103 to lighten the image overall. If your Layer Palette Options are set up for an adjustment layer to automatically add a mask, click on the mask and press Ctrl + i to invert it. My Options are set up so I can add a mask only if I want one to appear. Because my adjustment layer doesn’t have a mask attached, I can simply hold down the Alt key and click on the add vector mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette and the mask will be black (hide all). With the foreground colour set to white and a large soft edged brush selected, make sure you are working on the mask and paint the face and hair area back in. At this point you can go back tweak each of the individual layers to come up with something you like. Here is my final image, and then a comparison image.

Have fun.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-another-quick-fix-for-portraits/feed/0Photoshop Tutorial : New To Oldhttp://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-new-to-old/
http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-new-to-old/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2012 07:01:53 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=4674Most of us probably spend our time trying to make old photos new again – so, I thought it would make a nice change if we took a new photo and made it old.

All of the settings will be relevant to the start image 800 x 585 @72 dpi.

You can practise on the image below if you like, copyright is mine etc.,

Duplicate the layer and then bring up a Hue/Sat adjustment layer by clicking on the ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette. Check the Colorize box and you can use the same settings I have if you like. Hue 25 – Sat 25 – Lightness 0. Merge the Hue Sat layer down. We are going to make the standard white border that comes with old photos. Use the rectangular marquee tool to draw inside the photo, use Shift + Ctrl + i to invert the selection, then fill it with white. You may end up with something similar to the image below.

Working on the newly adjusted layer, hold down the Alt key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. When the dialogue box appears, check the box that says ‘Use previous layer to create clipping mask’ leave all the other things as is. Go to Edit>Fill and you can use the same colour as I have if you want *EECE93* Fill the layer with the colour. Add a layer mask to this layer by clicking on the ‘add layer mask’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette – click on the mask to make sure it is active, then go to Filter>Render>Clouds. Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels and you can punch in the same numbers I have if you like.

You can take the opacity of the layer down to about 15% if you like – you will be able to adjust it later (the joys of adjustment layers)

Hold down the Alt key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and check the ‘use previous layer to create clipping mask’ again. Go to Edit>Fill and you can use the same colour I have if you like *C1A467* Add a layer mask to this layer and then go to Filter>Render>Clouds, then go to Image>Adjustments>Levels – use some different numbers this time – mine were

50 – 0.50 – 225 I took the opacity of the layer down to 50%.

Go to the ‘create new fill or adjustment layer’ at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Pattern from the menu. You may have to load the Rock Textures if they aren’t already there, and then choose ‘Textured Tile’ from those patterns and lower the scale to 60%, change the blend mode of the layer to Linear Burn and take the opacity down to 25%

Hold down the alt key and click on the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Check the ‘Use previous layer as clipping mask, change the blend mode to soft light and check the ‘Fill with soft light neutral color (50% gray). Go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and you can use the same settings as I have below.

Hold down the Alt key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Check the ‘Use previous layer as clipping mask’ and click OK. Grab the pencil tool, and with the f/ground set to black, draw some squiggles around the image. Switch the f/ground colour to white and do the same thing. Then take the opacity of the layer down to about 20%

You can now go through and adjust the layers to suit if you like. I’ve added a curves adjustment layer to mine. You are going to do a ‘stamp visible’ so, making sure the top most layer is active press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E and all the layers will be stamped onto one layer.

You could go and look for some coffee stain brushes on the net if you’d like to add that to the image as well. The image still needs the mandatory fold line in it though, so lets go ahead and add one of those.

Make sure the top most layer is active, then click on the ‘create new layer’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Grab the rectangular marquee tool and draw out a selection from the top to about half way down the image. Make sure the f/ground colour is white and select the gradient tool. Use a f/ground to transparent linear gradient and referencing the image below apply the gradient.

Go to Select>Inverse and then create a new layer, switch the f/ground to black and using the gradient tool do the same as before except start outside the selection from the centre of the image. Deselect. You should have something similar to the image below.

Merge the two layers together, then press Ctrl + i on the keyboard to inverse. You can take the layer opacity down to about 40%, or whatever suits. Below is the final image and then a comparion im Have fun.

]]>http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-new-to-old/feed/0Photoshop Tutorial : Create An Orton Effecthttp://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-create-an-orton-effect/
http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-tutorial-create-an-orton-effect/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2012 06:52:05 +0000http://www.thetazzone.com/?p=4672The Orton Effect is named after Michael Orton who first used the technique and is a sandwich of two images, one in focus the other out of focus. With the advent of Digital Photography and Image editing programs, the Orton Effect has been done for years in various ways, but it does come down to the right image and personal taste.
What you will be doing is very similar to THIS tutorial. It should also be easily done in Elements, PSP, The Gimp etc., I can’t remember where I first saw this done, but it has been around for a couple of years, and others have either expanded it or taken away from it.

You can practise on the image below if you like, copyright is mine etc.,

For this to work on other images, the image should have any adjustments needed already done – including being sharpened i.e. print ready.

Open the image, duplicate it and close the original. Double click on the layer to unlock it and when the dialogue box appears, rename the layer *Original* Now you are going to add a levels adjustment layer, you could use a curves adjustment layer if you wanted – either way, you are using an adjustment layer so that you have the ability to go back and change the settings later if you feel like it. Add a levels adjustment layer by clicking on the little ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette. Slide the middle slider to the left till it reads 1.35 see image below.

Click on the b/ground (original) layer and duplicate it using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + J and then repeat again. Name the middle layer Multiply and the top layer Blur. Click on the levels adjustment layer and repeat the same process i.e. you should have 3 adjustment layers. Drag the adjustment layers down till you have one image, one adjustment layer see image below.

Next you are going to Clip each of the adjustment layers with the image layer below. Click on one of the adjustment layers to make it active and use the keyboard shortcut
Ctrl + Alt + G to Create Clipping Mask. See image below.

Click on the Blur layer and then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur I entered an amount of 5 pixels and then took the opacity of the layer down to 60%. Click on the Multiply layer and change the blend mode to Multiply and I took the opacity of the layer down to 65%. If you have any part of the image that you would like to stay sharp, add a layer mask to the blur layer and brush them back in. I added a layer mask and brought back the eye and the black thing on the Rosella’s beak. See image below.

I’ve added a Hue/Sat layer at the top of the stack and boosted the Master by 10, I then inverted the layer mask Ctrl + i and used a soft edged brush to paint back in the bird. You can go through and adjust anthing you want, and you may end up with something similar to the final image below – and then the comparison image. Have fun